Posts Tagged «nfc»

No cash, no credit cards, and now no driver’s license needed. The state of Iowa will soon be releasing a dedicated app that will effectively serve as a complete replacement for the traditional plastic driver’s license, and other states will likely follow suit.

Apple Pay launched in the US last week, and its apparent success is already breeding contempt: With no public explanation, both CVS and Rite Aid — huge US drugstore/pharmacy chains — have stopped accepting Apple Pay. A leaked memo from Rite Aid says a consortium of US retailers is working on a mobile wallet solution, and thus Apple Pay was disabled so that their own solution — called CurrentC — will stand more of a chance when it’s launched in 2015.

It’s just over a month past the launch of iOS 8, and the first major iteration has just been released for iPhones and iPads. So, what’s new in iOS 8.1? Without a doubt, the biggest addition is Apple Pay. Finally, you can use a combination of NFC and Touch ID to make payments on the App Store, and at select retail locations. In addition, this update brings a handful of other useful improvements to both the Messages and Photos apps.

There’s a new company in town that wants to replace your credit, debit, and store cards with a single digital “meta” card: The unpronounceable and probably-conceived-during-a-drunken-game-of-scrabble Plastc. The Plastc Card is the same size and thickness (0.8mm) as a credit card, but it manages to pack in a battery, e-ink display, NFC, and other high-tech features, along with the usual magnetic strip.

Today, millions of happy customers are unboxing their brand new iPhone 6s. Bigger screens, better battery life, and faster internals are all neat advancements, but these new devices have much more to offer than harder, better, faster, stronger. With a combination of improved internals and a shiny new operating system, your iPhone 6 has quite a few impressive tricks up its sleeves.

Apple has announced its new mobile payments system: Apple Pay. As expected, it will allow you to use your iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, or Apple Watch as a digital wallet, paying at one of the 220,000 contactless payment locations across the US. Furthermore, though, Apple Pay also simplifies online payments, allowing you to buy things with just a single tap of the Touch ID sensor (your fingerprint). Apple Pay will also work with the Apple Watch.

At the iPhone 6 event in California, Apple’s ‘one last thing’ was the reveal of the new iWatch. As expected, the iWatch is a round-faced smartwatch that pairs with your new iPhone 6 (or any other modern iOS device with Bluetooth), while providing all of the usual health-tracking functionality of other smartwatches via a bevy of clever sensors. There is a sapphire glass front panel to prevent any wear and tear, and NFC and digital wallet support so that you can pay for things using just your smartwatch.

It’s crazy, but one of the most dangerous things you can do is visit the hospital. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that nearly two million hospital patients contract a healthcare-associated infection (HAI) every year, and 90,000 of those HAIs result in death. These infections, such as MRSA, are caused by bacteria being transferred from patient to patient, usually via a doctor or nurse. Hand washing is by far the simplest solution to these 90,000 unnecessary deaths, but getting healthcare professionals to reliably wash their hands has proven to be difficult. This is where IBM and its low-power mote technology (LMT) comes in.

In modern times, a portable storage device isn’t far from our possession. Either we can use the storage on our phones or tablets, or we keep a small flash drive on a keychain. Accessing the data, however, may not be convenient in a given situation. Making the storage and access of data more convenient, artist Anthony Antonellis implanted an RFID chip into his hand that can store data which can be wirelessly accessed by a smartphone.

For a while now, battery tech has been one of the biggest bottlenecks through which future devices and impressive features must squeeze before they arrive. Progress on that front, as you may have noticed by your phone dying during your commute every night, has been slow. Instead of moving forward, though, battery advances can move sideways. Wireless charging is at the forefront of these sideways advances, and a new system in which an e-ink display can be wirelessly charged via NFC proves just that.

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